Days 3 and 4, or, One Week Later

These days are so long I really do feel like the 32 days are going to feel like 32 weeks. Or maybe that we just cram in enough here to make it feel like we've done enough to fill that amount of time.

At 7:45 in the morning yesterday my roommate Kathy led a really nice yoga class in our sort of classroom area (called "the nest"). After breakfast we all took turns auditioning for Juliette and Sigrid. This was the same audition as the community members go through. It consists of picking a short-and-sweet sentence from a newspaper before you go into the audition room (mine was "You've added a robot uprising." It was an article on a new Anna Karenina adaptation, HAH.), and then Juliette gave you different circumstances to say that line. For instance, "your dog just ate your favorite pair of shoes, now scold that dog by saying the line three times, building in intensity." Things like that.

After we all did the callbacks together. These were also really fun consisting mainly of theatrey games (although I think in the real callback they'll read from the script). Then we talked about how to run auditions and the different jobs, ate lunch, and made our way to the two different audition locations.

I was at Humphrey Park, where we held auditions at the teen center. I guess because we had to start the institute so much earlier this year and it is interrupted by the 4th of July, we didn't really have enough time to get the word out, so at each location we only had about 8 or 9 people audition over the course of 3 hours. Since there were about 10 of us at each location, many of us wound up taking a bunch of fliers and going around with one or two others to recruit auditioners and get the word about the play out. I went with Terri (a grandmother who is probably a little older than my mom from Hawaii, just finished her Master's in theatre) and Camee (a married Mormon about to enter her senior year in theatre ed. at BYU...are you getting a sense of the diversity of backgrounds here?). Thankfully Camee speaks some Spanish from living in Mexico City several years during high school, and we had to rely on her quite a bit when talking with people. I wished even more that I spoke Spanish, and I'm determined to give Rosetta Stone a go when I have the time.

The responses we got ranged, but were mostly on the positive to "think about it" end of the spectrum. Pacoima is not exactly how I imagined it. While it is known for having a lot of gang violence (over 40 gangs here), the community is lots of concrete and wire fences. Apparently each home holds 1.5 families, so even though the area has a somewhat manicured look, it contains a lot. Walking back to the park from a shopping complex on a residential street we found an uncapped syringe needle. Terri picked it up to throw it away, worried that a kid might step on it. It was weird feeling for me, because on the one hand I was not that surprised given everything I've heard about the community, but on the other it looked so out of place just sitting there on the sidewalk of a fairly quiet neighborhood. If it had been in the park's parking lot I don't think I would have felt so surprised.

There was a small group of boys, probably all around ten years old, who were skateboarding in the park. Juliette really wanted them to audition, and she along with many others tried to talk them into it. But as our stage manager alejandra noted, they already have a job. I noticed that at one point a car booming with music drove by and the boys ran up to the window, meaning they're probably lookouts for drug dealers in the area. It's a shame, since they're so young and already there's a loss of youth.

After we regrouped to share audition experiences and ate dinner, Kathy led us in a fun warm up and then we had a three hour class on the history of Cornerstone. I was struck by how the company has never let its artistic values fall because of its community work. Unfortunately at 10pm I was barely able to keep my eyes open in the dark (we were watching clips and looking at photos). I'm grateful to have the day off today only because I think I still haven't recovered from my whirlwind travels...and I got ten hours of sleep last night, ahhh.